Chapter Thirty Five.

A Day Too Late.

Not less radiantly did the sun shine upon the blue lake, in whose pellucid surface lay mirrored the great feathery slopes of the Savoy Alps; not less joyously did the cheerful sights and sounds of everyday life run their course after the terrible catastrophe of which that fairest of earth’s scenes had been the theatre. Pleasure boats skimmed the placid waters; quarry barges, their white triangular sails hanging listless in the still air, were unlading their cargoes of stones brought thither from the Savoy shore; even a steamer swept up to the jetty, and, having discharged and received its human freight, went plashing on its way. The world still went on; but to Alma Wyatt, wandering there alone by the landing-place in the glad sunshine, the golden side of life was clouded over for evermore.

Nearly a month had gone by since poor Philip’s remains had been carried back to the home of his fathers for burial. His successor, the new baronet, a distant cousin whom he had known but slightly, had hurried to the scene of the disaster, and much moved by his young kinsman’s most lamentable fate had spared no trouble and expense to ensure that every honour and care should surround the last lugubrious arrangements. But the awful strain of that horrible experience had told upon Alma, and for three weeks she was so ill and prostrate that she was forbidden to leave her room.

When, eventually, she was able to appear again, she would not leave the place. With a persistency which her friends more or less strongly condemned as morbid—impressing upon her the thankfulness she ought to feel that the explosion had not taken place a few minutes earlier, while she herself was standing on the fatal spot—she would make her daily pilgrimage to the scene of the disaster, for to her it was holy ground. To her had been spoken the very last words he ever breathed, and they had been words of love. Her lips had received the last kiss it had been in his power to bestow. “You will never regret it,” he had said. And did she? Not for worlds would she barter that sweet sad recollection. She loved him now—loved him with all her heart and soul and being. And it was too late. Too late! She might go to him, but never more could he return to her.

There in the noontide sunshine she stood, and, whatever way her eyes might turn, the whole scene around her brought back his memory. She could see the little white village of St. Gingolph sleeping beneath the great mountains on the opposite shore; and it brought back that day, when tossing on the furious billows of that sudden tempest, they had reckoned their hours as numbered—and there were times when in the bitterness of her soul she could find it in her heart to wish they had died together then. Again, there rose the green serrated ridges of the Chaîne des Verreaux, beneath whose shadow she had received his first declaration of love. She could see the distant arête of the Cape-au-Moîne heaved up against the blue sky, could mark the exact spot where they had cowered for shelter when exposed to the wild fury of the blast, up there on those dangerous heights, now so green and smiling in the sunlight, and she could see him in the sweet golden evening of that eventful day, so appealing, so winning in his brave young beauty, as he poured out his love at her feet. Then she hardly knew her own heart. Now she knew it. But—too late.

“How do you do, Miss Wyatt?”

She started violently. That familiar voice even, fitted with the picture she had been drawing. Turning she encountered the dark, piercing eyes of Fordham.

He had raised his hat, but he did not offer his hand. He stood there contemplating her with grave, saturnine expression as of old.

“Wretched business this,” he said, with a jerk of the head in the direction of the spot where the catastrophe had taken place. “Poor fellow, poor fellow! Well, I suppose even I can hardly be held so much as indirectly responsible for it.”

“I hardly know whether I am speaking to his friend or his enemy,” said Alma, who, while instinctively distrusting this strange being, yet was conscious of being in some degree held spell-bound, even as the historic wedding-guest, together with an unaccountable anxiety to hear what he had to say.

“Both, I suppose,” answered Fordham, impassively. “Formerly that is to say. Now only the first. You have heard of such a thing as a vendetta, I suppose, Miss Wyatt?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I come of the race among which that institution is pre-eminently supposed to flourish. Philip’s father injured me, and I foredoomed the son from his cradle to be the means of avenging that injury upon the father. And when the time came—he did so.”

“And you are such a monster as to come here and gloat over it!” said Alma, recoiling from him in a perfect horror of repulsion. But the other was unmoved. A wintry ghost of a smile drooped the corners of his mouth. He looked at her for a moment and went on.

“By no means. I saved his life more than once—and twice after that I gave him his life.”

“Gave him his life?”

“Yes. Are you aware that he challenged me, and I met him?”

“I had heard of it.”

“Well, we exchanged shots twice; rather, I let him have two shots at me, while I—blazed away at the heavens. He could have had a dozen if he wished, but the seconds did not. I am a dead shot, and I was not going to fire at him. Now, am I such a monster?”

“Go on.”

“Well, his bullet hit me, and I shall never walk straight again. It hit me—exactly where I wounded his father when Philip himself was hardly out of his cradle. But I bore him not the slightest grudge for that—nor do I. My vendetta was accomplished. It had to be done, and it was done. Yet several times I wavered. The chances were even that I would spare him, for I had grown fond of the boy. And, Miss Wyatt, yours is the hand that turned the scale against him.”

“Mine? What do you mean?”

“Yours. I mean just that. You were in such a hurry to send him to the right-about, to condemn him unheard, that you threw him back into my power again. My power against him could not have stood against yours—but you threw yours away. Afterwards it was too late.”

Oh the anguish of her heart as she listened! This man was reiterating word for word what Philip himself had said. Why had she been in such a hurry to condemn him unheard? Well, her whole life now was destined to be an expiation of that one act of hard and merciless pride. Fordham, who had been watching her keenly, with a feeling, half grim, half sorrowful at his heart, continued:

“That marriage of his was brought about solely by me. You may or may not have guessed that, yourself apart, there was every reason why that particular alliance could have been nothing but absolutely disastrous to him. Well, into the particulars I need not go—especially for your enlightenment. Suffice it to say that the measure was brought about for the purposes of my lifelong feud, of which it was the crowning act. And now his wife is dead.”

Every vestige of colour forsook Alma’s cheeks. What infinite possibilities might not the future have opened out?

“Dead?” she echoed. “How? When?”

“Yes—dead. She died suddenly—the day before poor Philip’s own end. But it was a day too late. Had it occurred a day earlier he would have heard of it, and would not have been in the Mont Blanc blow-up.”

“Was she—was she—fond of him?” gasped Alma.

“Passionately, I am told; and that was a factor in the carrying out of my vendetta.” And then, backing against the iron railing of the jetty to rest his lame leg, Fordham continued deliberately, “So you see, if he had landed here at Ouchy, when you did, instead of deciding to go on further, Philip would now be a free man as well as a living one. But that is the way of the world—our blessings, when they come to us, invariably do so a day too late.”

Fordham was right.